Tuesday, 24 April 2012

Whatever Happened To The Time Traveller?

Let us assume, as a fictional premise, that Wells’ true account, The Time Machine, was mistaken for fiction because the Time Traveller never returned. It follows that a nineteenth century inventor built a time machine in his laboratory whereas the collective approach of twentieth century science somehow prevented scientists from realizing that time travel was possible. What has been discovered once can be discovered again.

Future time travellers, realising that Wells’ Time Traveller was a real person, will want to meet him. Perhaps the silent dinner guest was a time traveller who did not speak because he did not want to risk changing the conversation recorded by Wells? Future time travellers would show Wells’ account to the original Time Traveller before his final departure. Knowing that he would not return to the nineteenth century, he would accompany them to their period. They could:

build bigger time machines;explore past and future history;rescue Weena;round up Eloi into a reservation;exterminate the Morlocks;rescue people from disasters throughout history andrepopulate the paradisal Earth with undevolved humanity.

Wells wrote no sequel but the Time Traveller might visit a twenty first century writer. Since I am not a fiction writer, it is unlikely to be me.